For Tenants Facing Eviction, New York May Guarantee a Lawyer

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Councilman Mark Levine at a rally at New York City Hall on Monday in support of a bill that would provide legal help to low-income tenants facing eviction.CreditCreditDave Sanders for The New York Times

Outside Housing Court in the Bronx, the line invariably winds down the block, snaking past the vendors at tables hawking cellphone plans and by a man selling moving boxes.

Inside, tenants clutching folders of documents, or lugging toddlers on their hips, stagger through the hallways.

On a recent Tuesday morning, the fear and confusion was palpable. Some tenants owed back rent, money they did not have. Two had already received eviction papers but said they had paid their rent, proffering copies of money orders and tattered receipts as proof to anyone who would stop to look.

In halting English, another man, a Rite Aid name tag pinned to his shirt, wandered around asking where he could find a lawyer.

Most likely, he was out of luck.

Despite $62 million set aside this fiscal year by Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, to bolster legal help, more than 70 percent of low-income tenants in New York City still go without lawyers in Housing Court, according to a report published in June by the newly created Office of Civil Justice, part of the city’s Human Resources Administration.

With landlords almost always represented by lawyers, tenants are overmatched from the start, tenant advocates and city officials say. Across the city last year, there were nearly 22,000 evictions, with the greatest number in the Bronx.

On Monday, the City Council held a hearing on a bill that would make New York City the first jurisdiction in the country to guarantee lawyers for any low-income residents facing eviction. Under the measure, tenants who make below 200 percent of the federal poverty line would qualify. (For a single person, the cutoff would be $23,540; for a family of four, it would be $48,500.)

The bill, which has already garnered the support of an overwhelming majority of council members, is part of a broader effort gaining momentum across the country to create a right to counsel for people in high-stake legal cases like evictions and foreclosures.

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Leyla Martinez, a single mother who lives in the Bronx, spoke at a Council hearing on Monday in favor of legislation that would help some tenants who face eviction in Housing Court.CreditDave Sanders for The New York Times

“Housing Court is a weapon that unscrupulous landlords use to displace tenants,” Councilman Mark D. Levine, who along with Councilwoman Vanessa L. Gibson, a fellow Democrat, sponsored the legislation, said in an interview on Monday. He added the bill is “about leveling the playing field.”

Within legal circles, the effort is known as Civil Gideon, a reference to the 1963 Supreme Court case that established a right to counsel in criminal cases.

It is gaining traction in New York as the city grapples with an affordable housing crisis. The total stock of affordable housing is dwindling, according to many measures, while costs are rising. From 2000 to 2012, the number of apartments renting for $1,000 or less dropped by 400,000, according to an analysis by the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer.

“People are literally falling off a cliff fighting for necessities without a lawyer,” said Jonathan Lippman, the former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, who has long argued that the poor should have a right to counsel in civil cases. “The playing field is uneven, lopsided because the tenant has no idea how to navigate the system.”

The bill has brought together a broad coalition that includes labor unions and the New York City Bar Association, as well as traditional tenant rights advocates. On the steps of City Hall on Monday, elected officials, including borough presidents from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the city comptroller and the public advocate, gathered to register their support for the bill. A large crowd of tenants who turned out waved signs and chanted “legal aid.”

The mayor’s office has not taken a position on the pending legislation, but Steven Banks, the commissioner of the Human Resources Administration, whose agency now coordinates the city’s legal initiatives to prevent eviction, noted the city had already “made an unprecedented commitment” to providing tenant legal services, referring to the money the city had set aside for tenant legal services. Mr. Banks said his office was “reviewing the impact of the proposed legislation.”

Providing legal representation to all low-income tenants would cost the city about $200 million a year, according to a March report by Stout Risius Ross, an independent advisory firm, for the bar association. But the report contended that the effort would save the city even more than that — over $300 million, annually — by keeping 5,237 families a year out of shelters, at a cost of $43,000 per family, along with other savings, such as through the preservation of rent-regulated affordable housing.

“The city can’t afford to not do this,” Mr. Lippman said.

In the last two years, the de Blasio administration has vastly increased financing for tenant legal services. Funding soared to nearly $62 million for this fiscal year, up from $6.4 million in 2013.

It seems to have made a difference, although not enough, some tenant advocates and city officials said.

Last year, evictions in New York City fell to their lowest level in a decade, court estimates show. Evictions dropped to 21,988 in 2015, an 18 percent decline from a year earlier.

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Jessica Hurd of Housing Court Answers, a research and advocacy group, said some tenants agreed to unfavorable deals with landlords before entering court.CreditDave Sanders for The New York Times

While the numbers are heartening, lawmakers say, much more needs to be done.

In Housing Court, having a lawyer can mean the difference between losing a home and keeping it.

Leyla Martinez, a single mother who lives in the Bronx, knows that all too well. In August, after spending more than a year fighting on her own in court, she returned home to face her nightmare: She had been evicted from her apartment and locked out.

“I was terrified,” Ms. Martinez said.

Desperate, she asked anyone she could find for help and found her way to Kamilla Sjodin, a lawyer with the Urban Justice Center. Within days, Ms. Sjodin was able to get her and her children back into the apartment.

Her experience is borne out by the numbers. Once tenants have lawyers, their chances of getting evicted fall more than 75 percent, according to a study by the Legal Aid Society and the bar association.

Many tenants, daunted by navigating Housing Court, agree prematurely to deals in the hallways to give up their apartments, said Jessica Hurd, the assistant director at Housing Court Answers, a research and advocacy group that operates the information tables.

A couple of months ago, Ms. Hurd said, she met a tenant who was so petrified because he was months behind on his rent that he voluntarily left his $800-a-month apartment rather than fight the case.

Providing tenants with lawyers can make a difference in other ways. Legal services lawyers say that landlords often drop eviction cases entirely once they learn that a tenant is represented.

City officials and lawyers say few tenants understand their rights under the city’s rent stabilization law. They often do not know, for example, that they are typically entitled to a new lease when their current one expires, or that there are strict caps on how much their rent can increase.

Even when tenants are struggling with overdue rent, lawyers can help them stave off eviction. If the landlords have not made repairs, for example, some tenants might be entitled to a reduced rent bill.

Alvin Browne, who fought off an eviction from his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with the help of a lawyer a few years ago, said in an interview at the rally on Monday that going to Housing Court was like traveling to a country where everyone spoke a different language. “We didn’t even know the questions to ask,” Mr. Browne said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: To Aid Poor Tenants Facing Eviction, the City May Guarantee a Free Lawyer. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe